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MEDIA RELEASE: MP Jenny Kwan Calls For Removal of Immigration Minister Lena Diab

MP Jenny Kwan Calls For Removal of Immigration Minister Lena Diab

Enough is enough. I am calling on Prime Minister Carney  to immediately fire the Minister of Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship, Lena Diab.

We have now learned that the minister responsible for Canada’s refugee system did not appear to know about the Singh case—the landmark Supreme Court decision that established fundamental Charter protections for refugee claimants and helped lay the foundation for Canada’s refugee determination system. That is not a minor gaffe. It is a profound failure of leadership.  

Sadly, this is not an isolated incident.   Not only has she proven herself to be inaccessible and unresponsive to major stakeholders including her own colleagues across all parties in parliament, Minister Diab has repeatedly demonstrated a complete lack of command over her portfolio, as she lurched from one disaster to another.  To just name a few examples, these include the debacle in the revocation of Lost-Canadian families' citizenship certificates and passports; the back-pedalling of her stated timeline to process Palestinian graduate student visas within 10 days; and her use of "commercial and monetized social media platforms"  to drop partial details about an upcoming temporary resident to a permanent resident program creating mass public confusion, speculation and an environment for predatory actors to exploit vulnerable applicants.   

Minister Diab has overseen one of the worst periods of immigration policy in Canada in decades with drastic cuts to Canada's immigration levels plan, resettlement organizations and staffing resources.  Her lack of leadership coupled with IRCC 's capacity crisis has only further escalated significant processing delays causing immense undue hardship for thousands of applicants and their families.  She led the draconian asylum restrictions in Bill C-12 which is now subject to an active court challenge.  

This government cannot keep asking people to pay the price for its incompetence. Minister Diab has lost the confidence of many this system is supposed to serve. I stand with frontline advocates and families who are calling for an immediate reset. Prime Minister Carney should fire Minister Diab.  

Hill Times Op Ed by Jenny Kwan: You don’t build a stronger Canada by selling it off

Airports are essential public infrastructure. They connect communities, move goods and support hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Travellers do not have unlimited choices. If you are flying through Vancouver, Toronto or Calgary, there is not another airport down the street competing for your business.

That is what makes airports different. They are precisely the kind of infrastructure where the public interest should come first. Yet once again, Canadians are being told that the answer is more private capital.

We have seen this movie before. In New Zealand, the Commerce Commission found that Auckland Airport was on track to earn hundreds of millions of dollars in excess profits. In Australia, Sydney Airport cut roughly 40 per cent of its workforce after employment protections expired. In Britain, airports were transformed into private commercial assets, creating opportunities for investors to capture returns from infrastructure that had once been publicly controlled.

These experiences do not prove every form of private investment produces the same result. But they demonstrate: when you turn a natural monopoly into an investment opportunity, someone is going to make money from it. The question is who.

That question becomes even more urgent with the government's new Building Canada Strong Act. The legislation promises to accelerate projects, streamline approvals and attract investment. Canada does need to build faster. We need housing, transit, clean energy, ports and rail.

But building faster cannot mean giving corporations a faster lane to profit from public assets.

 

Surveillance Town Hall is FULL! Watch online via Facebook Live

*Click image or link to go to the Facebook Live page - https://www.facebook.com/share/1Efa8ffPPR/?mibextid=wwXIfr

TOWN HALL MEETING: Surveillance Pricing

How your data determines what you pay!
What if the price you pay at the store is different than the person standing next to you?

Corporations can use personal data such as location, device type, browsing history, purchase behavior, login status, and loyalty cards/programs to profile consumers and determine what different people are charged for the same goods and services.

How can we stop this from happening in Canada?

Join MP Jenny Kwan, Patrick Johnson - President of UFCW 1518, Jim Stanford - Economist and Director of Centre for Future Work, Avi Lewis - NDP Leader and Benjamin Fung - Canada Research Chair in Data Mining for Cybersecurity and other experts, for a public forum and community conversation about what surveillance pricing means for consumers and workers, how technology and personal data are changing the way prices are set, and what everyday people can do to fight back.

*Scan QR code, click the image or this link to register your attendance - https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/your-data-their-price-a-town-hall-on-surveillance-pricing-tickets-1998495899032

CBC News: Canadians born abroad caught up in yearslong citizenship certificate processing delays

IRCC taking 33 months to process applications in wake of 'lost Canadians' law

When Pascal Sud and Meisha Smith prepared in January for the arrival of their first child, the choice seemed simple.

Smith would give birth in her home country of Jamaica where she had family support, and then they would together return to Montreal three months later.

At the time, the wait time for the citizenship certificate that their daughter, Sofianne, needed to fly back to Canada was between four and six weeks.

But more than eight months later, they're still waiting.

Sud is back at work in Montreal while Smith and Sofianne are still in Jamaica. 

"It's been very frustrating," said Sud. "I was lucky to be there for three months … but I've been missing every step since, and it's been very difficult to be apart from them."

He's not alone.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is struggling to handle a flood of citizenship applications — many of them from a change to federal law late last year that allows anyone who can prove they have a Canadian ancestor to apply.

That backlog is preventing Canadians born abroad like Sofianne from coming home.

According to the department's most recent update on Sept. 3, there are 136,000 applications waiting to be processed. Those applying for a citizenship certificate now face a wait of 33 months.

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan called on the government to restore staffing and resources that were cut at IRCC, calling the processing delays "simply unreasonable and unacceptable."

*Click image or link to read the full news story - https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-citizenship-lost-canadians-c3-backlog-9.7366981

 

Globe & Mail: Decades after her diagnosis, Adrienne Clarkson calls for better endometriosis care

More than six decades after being diagnosed with endometriosis, former governor-general Adrienne Clarkson considers herself “one of the very lucky ones.”

At 21, after learning she had the painful inflammatory disease, Ms. Clarkson soon had surgery at Toronto General Hospital. She credits her gynecologist at the time, Douglas Cannell, for preserving part of an ovary.

At the time, a nurse told her any other surgeon would have done a hysterectomy because her situation was “a mess.” Dr. Cannell spent two hours in the operating room with her.

Ms. Clarkson is grateful to have had access to his expertise so she was later able to bear children – something that isn’t always possible because endometriosis is associated with infertility in about 30 to 60 per cent of cases. Many patients require fertility treatments to conceive.

Endometriosis is an inflammatory condition that sees cells similar to those on the inside of the uterus grow outside of it. It is commonly associated with severe pelvic pain, which adversely affects patients’ well-being, productivity and relationships.

It also carries a high cost burden for the health care system. A population study published in 2020 looked at hospital admissions in Canada over a five-year period for every province except Quebec. It recorded that there were 47,000 admissions, totalling $152.2-million in health care costs, which amounts to $30-million a year.

Earlier this year, Elize Nocente, a Grade 11 student who lives in Vancouver, started a House of Commons petition, sponsored by B.C. NDP MP Jenny Kwan, to raise awareness of endometriosis in schools. She does not have the condition herself but knows others who do, and she aspires to be an obstetrician/gynecologist one day.

The petition calls for the federal government to establish a national advisory board on endometriosis education and to work with provincial and territorial governments to support the mandatory inclusion of endometriosis education in curricula.

*Click image or link to read the full news story - https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-adrienne-clarkson-calls-for-better-endometriosis-care/

Toronto Star: RCMP pays $394,000 of $7.5-million contract for grounded Black Hawk helicopter

OTTAWA — The RCMP has avoided a $7.5-million fee and any finding of wrongdoing after the cancellation of one of its Black Hawk helicopter contracts, potentially ending a months-long controversy over an aircraft it chartered that was not eligible to fly in Canada.

The Mounties are walking away with a $394,000 bill for the 10 days the helicopter flew before regulatory concerns grounded it in June, but will not have to pay for any of the time the Black Hawk was sitting idle, after the contract was cancelled under an “amicable” agreement.

It will also continue working with operator Helicopter Transport Services, which provided the helicopter despite only being licensed to use it for training and special events, with two other Black Hawk contracts unaffected and running until at least December.

Public Services and Procurement Canada says that “as the contract was terminated by mutual consent, there was no finding of wrongdoing” in its internal probe of the contract, but the department did not confirm if it has completely dropped the investigation.

Transport Canada, meanwhile, says it’s still assessing the unauthorized use of the helicopter and will not yet comment on “any decisions or potential compliance or enforcement measures” against the operator.

The RCMP maintains it did everything in a “fair, open and transparent manner” because it replaced its supplier for the third Black Hawk with Helicopter Transport Services due to a lower price offer. The company did not return a request for comment.

NDP public safety critic Jenny Kwan said she’s still left wondering why the RCMP signed the contract in the first place

“What action is being taken, or policy change is being made to ensure taxpayers are not on the hook for such wasteful spending in the future?” Kwan wrote in an email. “The prime minister needs to be honest, transparent and accountable to Canadians.”

*Click image or link to read the full news story - https://www.therecord.com/politics/federal/rcmp-pays-394-000-of-7-5m-contract-for-grounded-black-hawk-helicopter/article_775f5459-0f8e-5baa-86e3-6f0432f8ee5c.html

CBC News: Liberal MP says he was demoted for supporting NDP bill targeting arms export controls

A Parliamentary Secretary should not have to choose between doing their job and following their conscience. Sean Casey supported my private member’s bill, Bill C-233, which sought to close a loophole in Canada’s arms export regime that allows Canadian-made weapons to reach countries through the United States despite Canada’s own export controls. The bill was defeated in the House, with 22 MPs voting in favour and 295 against.

Sean Casey says he was removed from his position as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs after supporting the bill.

If MPs cannot vote according to their conscience on a private member’s bill without risking their government position, what does a “free vote” actually mean?

I want to thank Sean Casey and the other MPs who supported Bill C-233 for standing up for the principle that Canada’s arms export controls must mean what they say—and that Parliament must be able to hold government policy to account.

The government can disagree with my bill. It can vote against it. But MPs should not have to fear losing their parliamentary responsibilities simply for voting according to their conscience.

*Click image or link to read the news story - https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/9.7359007

 

The Hub: Lines that landed: Question Period for September 24

Privatizing ports and airports

“The Liberals claim they are not selling off Canada’s assets, but the doublespeak is deafening.”

— Jenny Kwan, NDP MP for Vancouver East

CTV News: Seniors arrested on Parliament Hill during climate protest

Several senior citizens were arrested for trespassing on Parliament Hill while attempting to deliver photos and stories about climate change to MPs.

*Click image or link to see more photos taken in Ottawa - https://guelph.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/photos/2026/09/22/seniors-arrested-on-parliament-hill-during-climate-protest/